


What Truly Matters

by orphan_account



Category: Hetalia: Axis Powers
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Gen, Self-Discovery, Self-Reflection
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-18
Updated: 2014-11-18
Packaged: 2018-02-26 04:11:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,364
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2637572
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>As he walks, he looks for a way to reconcile the past. Instead, he finds a new home, forgiveness, and learns how to move on. This is Mochimerica’s journey to happiness.</p>
            </blockquote>





	What Truly Matters

**Author's Note:**

> Based on the Mochi!Nation strips, and written with very close reference to them. If you haven’t read them yet go read them now, else you wouldn’t be able to understand what's happening here.
> 
> Written in Nov 2011.

I know that my father wasn’t really my father. I know that he adopted me. I don’t even look anything like him; how could I have believed him in the first place? But I don’t really know what to say. He raised me. He taught me what the world was. He was my father, and he will be forever.

 

When I was young, I lived in a lettuce farm. It was a place with huge fields where I could wander about to my heart’s content, getting lost sometimes but still having fun. My earliest memory is of dancing around the patches of lettuce we farmed.

 

As I grew progressively older, my father taught me how to work the fields to get the most beautiful, greenest heads of lettuce. Although it was terribly exhausting, I appreciated it, because exercise helped to keep me healthy, and that was important for a long life, he always said. He would treat me at times too, lovingly buying me candy, even though we knew that it wasn’t healthy. It was a secret that he and I had to keep, he would tell, then wink.

 

I would spend time with him everyday by going to sit on a hill with him to watch the sun rise and set. The rays would shine and warm us in the morning, bringing the dawn of a new day, a new start, and as I was enraptured by the beauty of nature, my father would look down at me and smile. I could always feel it. The fondness in his gaze, the love. But I never actually talked to him during those times. The silence was much too magical to break. Then, at dusk we would talk about the little things. The gate needing oiling, how I’d accidentally tripped and scraped myself earlier in the day. Dad would listen, and then make the funniest comments. I loved to hear him laughing. But he sometimes, he reminisced about the past.

 

There was this one time where he was talking about his long-ago love. According to him, she was a beautiful lady. He told me that she was soft, softer than I could possibly imagine. She had the clearest blue eyes, like the sky at noon. Her smiles were the brightest. She’d cheer him up even when he was the saddest.

 

And then he got an impossibly sorrowful look in his eyes. As if he couldn’t bear to say what was next.

 

She was his best friend, and one day, another came to take his place. But not just his place. So much more, he took her head over heels and made her fall completely and helplessly in love with him. He described how handsome, how dashing he was. What exactly made her love him, as if it was just his appearance and his reputation as a high-flying celebrity that she was infatuated with.

 

His face became bitter at this point. A tear rolled down his cheek. He neglected to say what had happened to her after she left him.

 

I don’t know if he noticed my realization. He was still in love with her. Helplessly in love. It makes me wonder sometimes if I’m not just a replacement, because I have blue eyes too. But at that exact moment, I was more concerned over my father crying. Other days, he would say, real men never cry. But he was crying now, and I didn’t know what to think. I knew one thing, though. I couldn’t forgive him for hurting my father this way. I knew how he looked like, and if I ever chanced upon him, I would avenge my father. I made an oath to myself that day.

 

At the exact same day he told me about her the following year, my father disappeared. I tried to call for him, look around. But he was never there. I searched everywhere. I asked the bushes, “Hello, Daddy, are you there?” I asked the dirt. The area behind the barn. The toilet bowl. The roof. It was all in vain. He was gone, and there wasn’t even thin air to grasp. I had nothing anymore, except my memories and the lettuce farm. But the memories were too painful. I couldn’t really hold on to them. No.

 

So after months of preparation, the harvest; everything we- I had in stock, I sold. The machines, the land, the seed- everything I gained from it, I vowed to use to find my father again.

 

With the money I earned, I travelled around the world. I sought out information brokers, at first. I wasn’t stupid. I wasn’t just going to blindly stumble into this. But they all refused to give me information about the mysterious man. He didn’t exist to them. There was something inherently wrong about it all. But after a while, I began digging deeper. There was nothing to scratch at the surface. Underneath, everything was different. I learnt about him. So much more about him. He was a sort of figurehead. He pulled the strings behind every mass fraud that had ever happened. He was terrifying. The brokers all had to be silenced, of course, after our meetings. I learned that after the first one had blabbed and people started coming after me. I gleaned then that at the farm, the little games we played, the exercises, the work Father and I did during the years I grew up weren’t for nothing.

 

It was almost too simple. It was as if he had already anticipated everything.

 

But there was one who never gave up. They called him Winter, and I knew why easily enough. The trademark white scarf he wore, stained with so much blood it became pink, symbolised his marriage to the cold assassinations he called his craft. He came and killed as silently as hypothermia, but death came much more swiftly when he was around than when the cold struck. He never failed, except when it came to me. He was actually about as strong as me, in a way. We would best each other repeatedly, neither of us ever winning nor losing completely. He eventually forgot the reason he chased me, and between his ‘commissions’, we would play a game of cat and mouse. He was always a disturbance to my true cause, but he made me feel alive every time he had me cornered. He made me focus. He made me assure myself that not all were dead ends, like they had been, for such a long time.

 

Something within me began to change. I was no longer naively innocent, the way I had been at the lettuce farm. Every part of me was covered in cold, dead blood. Nightmares haunted me at night. I couldn’t sleep, not really, not anymore. I was plagued by shadows. I became lost and confused. The world became hazy, just a blur.

 

Of course, my main goal hadn’t deviated, but somehow, my method had. I had to keep up with my rival, did I not? I began to look into other ways. Ways of making myself stronger. Far, far stronger than what was needed. To find my father again, I had to be strong, and there was no other option. So I gave myself as a test subject for a while. Experiments were done on me. I was used as a biological guinea pig. I had no name. Just numbers to show who I was. But it didn’t matter. I had to do this, for my father. I had to become stronger. Winter didn’t bother me during this period. I think he knew what I was doing. But it really, really didn’t matter. That time was just too foggy to remember, really. The only thing I recalled was intense pain and screaming, though I didn’t know whether it was mine or the others’.

 

I just know that by the end of it all, I had abilities no one else had. A constant throbbing. A smile that I couldn’t get rid of, no matter what. And a pair of glasses, perched on my face, because my eyesight had been damaged when an experiment went wrong. And blood. So much blood, all over me. When I woke up and saw the scientists, or the only parts that were left of them, I cried. What had I transformed into?

 

But it was all for my father.

 

Those were the last tears I ever released.

 

Eventually, all hope gradually extinguished itself in my hollow, empty heart. Then, I found a lead. A small, old fortune teller in an obscure corner of the world told me that I would find the one I was looking for would be found in the land of the free. However, she warned me, he would not be the one I was looking for anymore. She said I would find an ending there. But only if I knew how to forgive.

 

What did she know? She was a blind old bat. I was fuelled by anger and I wasn’t able to think straight. The experiments had somehow simplified my brain processes. I could only feel short, direct emotions. I acted based on those all-powerful urges driven by my own brain. The only way I could process anything was to do so without feeling. I couldn’t even speak properly anymore, only talking in short, stilted sentences. So I did the stupidest thing I could have ever done. I laid her under a bed of edelweiss, hoping that she would rejoin her brother up in heaven. I stopped myself before pictured myself up there too. I couldn’t wash away the stains, so it was alright. I didn’t belong there anyway.

 

I moved to America immediately. When I arrived, I looked around for a very long time. I needed to find someone who could cover me for a while, I guess. I just got so sick and tired of running away. From Winter, from the world. I didn’t know that I was just running away from myself.

           

I don’t know how much time passed before I came to a medium-sized, respectable house. It had a small garden with blue cornflowers running rampant. It looked classic, yet had a feel that it was much more modern than it let on. Part of me sensed that the place was bursting with state-of-the-art security systems that prevented anyone from going inside. But it seemed homely.

 

When I was inside, there were pictures of a bespectacled man smiling with another two men. He didn’t know why he was so attracted to him or why he noticed him at all. He was plain and normal. But still, I felt completely drawn to him. He looked and felt a small sadness inside. Could i smile like that too, someday? Something real; not the fake i had plastered on?

 

I chewed on a piece of newspaper on the floor absent-mindedly. I had long lost my taste buds, but the texture was soothing in my mouth.

 

I nearly froze in shock as I heard footsteps. I looked around frantically- But there was no time- I couldn’t- The thuds stopped.

                       

“It’s okey! I’m American.” The words stumbled out of my mouth. I couldn’t tell him where I was really from, right? I had to pretend, for my sake. I had to blend in with the country around me. So, American I was. I raised a small flag of the country, hoping that he would be a patriotic man, and would spare me. I couldn’t die now. Not after all that I’d been through.

 

"W-what is this?” The man stuttered out.

 

Wishing to appeal to him once more, I raised another flag.

 

“Look!! I’m American too!!”

 

The days passed by fairly quickly. This man was a good man. He took care of me, like father did. For the first time in what felt like eternity, I could fall asleep. The feeling was amazing, just blissful falling.

 

I was woken when the man worriedly shouted as I snoozed on his coat rack. He sounded honestly concerned about me. I felt something shift in my heart, or something that resembled what I thought had vanished long ago.

 

“A-are you okay?” His voice drifted into my consciousness.

 

“It’s okey!! I’m American!!” I said, just to assure him. It felt warm.

           

From that moment on, I couldn’t really leave the man. I would follow him around his house. I slept in the areas he was normally in, or places where his scent was prevalent.

 

I’d slept in worse places before, I reasoned. A trash bin wasn’t so bad. I snuggled inside, willing myself to bask inside his presence, comforting as it was. And it did soothe me. I fell asleep again.

 

I panicked when something was thrown at me. I was ready to defend myself. But it was just this tiny man again, with his strange kindness. He asked me what I was doing there, and whether I was okay again. A spark of hope flitted in my chest, but instead of what I wanted to say to him, a song lifted itself out. A tune that represented my intentions, so it was alright, I let it be.

 

I moved around his house, wanting to find something precious to present to this man who had been nice to me, without any reward at all. I hummed when I remembered that his sort loved ice cream, a cold confection that I had enjoyed as well when I was drifting about. They kept it in refrigerators. I knew that. So while he was not around, I went into his freezer to retrieve it. And I became wedged in the minute space between the door and the box. I attempted to get out but I was stuck and it felt so much like I was back then and I couldn’t breathe- I couldn’t breathe- I couldn’t-

 

And he arrived in time, just to reach out to me and rescue me.

 

“I know!! I know!! Just ice cream!!” I placated him exasperatedly. But the fondness I had for him was there, and I think that was when I started seeing him as not just a stranger anymore, but someone I would trust.

 

The old woman’s words came to slap me in the face when the man started to feed me. I felt wrong eating lettuce. They were my sort-of cousins, after all. I had lovingly grown, and grown with them. But as I ate, I stared at the leaves more closely. They felt familiar. The detailing, the veins. And it all clicked. It wasn’t just lettuce. I was wrong. It was my daddy.

 

I choked and forced myself to vomit everything out. I felt sick. But it was a clue. It reminded me of the goal I had, before I had impossibly started forgetting.

His odd generosity didn’t stop there, though. He began caring for others like me. They were friendly, and I appreciated that. One was sweet and enjoyed chocolate on their lettuce, like me. He put up with me playing with him, and that was nice of him. The other was shy but I enjoyed his companionship too, though the small man thought that we looked alike and mistook us for each other sometimes. I interacted with them, and they me. I never felt extremely close to them, but I was close enough.

 

Then, the old woman got another one-up on me from where she was.

 

There he was, my father.

 

He called out to me. I couldn’t believe my eyes. It felt surreal. For too long, I had been chasing after a dream. But now it was genuine. It was in front of my eyes. I recoiled. But joy overtook me and led me to soar. He was still my father, and how could I forget that? He warmly called out to me, like we had never been separated. He called out to _me_ , and he greeted me. I couldn’t possibly believe it, not at first glance. But I recognised the way his veins curled about the farthest reaches of his digits, limbs that had held me so many times as I was feeling distressed. I asked him for confirmation. I wanted so, so desperately to trust in each letter he was saying, to relish every single syllable he spoke. It had been too long. Too long for this. The dam, however, stayed silently steady, although I wished so much for it to break and just tell him how much I missed him. Then, father started telling me about his dream for me and for him.

 

Father was just so inspiring. He talked on and on about how the world would be changed into a utopia, just for people like us. The woman he loved would come back, and we’d live together as a happy family. No one could stop us. We would be happy. On the land where others had spread their disgusting influences on, we would burn and destroy until it was arid, and make it anew. We would take away the soil drenched in the words of the damned, damned as we decreed, and replace it. We would plant lettuce all over the world, and we, and whatever survivors, could live happily, with nothing framing our lives. My father bid me goodbye that day, promising that we would see each other again. For tomorrow. When we would start to rebuild the corrupt, dirty place that we called our planet.

 

I knew it wasn’t really my father anymore. His words were poisonous, full of propaganda. But I could care less. He was my father, and he was back. I was bursting with happiness, and the small man looked bemusedly at me all day long as I tried to get the others to celebrate with me.

 

When I found my father mutilated the next day, it hadn’t been what I was expecting. He told me that he would see me again. Was he lying? Did he know this would happen? I started shivering, rocking back and forth slowly. I cradled his remains and cried out for him. Please, come back, Dad, we reunited! We were supposed to live happily ever after with the small man! It was too late, I knew, but I kept hoping, trying. Dad! Dad! Dad! Dad! I called out, as I hugged the only remnants of him left. My chest was shaking and breaking and there was hot warmth inside as well as freezing cold and I felt hollow and empty but I couldn’t cry. No tears would leak out. Then I started thinking, mind racing, calculation.

 

Fury burned inside me. The only one who would hurt my father the way he did, break apart our would-be family; he had done it before. It was too obvious. The tomato farmer. The one who had shattered my father and made him weak once had done it again. This time, permanently. I turned my rage into a cold weapon. I would find him, and kill him.

 

I was still grieving when he brought us away from our house. I felt insecure outside, and father’s death only served to make it worse. Then, he introduced us to a little British snob. But as we were forced together, I recognized a look of longing in his eyes. He wanted friendship too, but he was hiding it very well. It made me want to cheer him up, but I don’t think he really liked it, so I just left him alone after that. Somehow, he had made me feel better about myself, since I had a home I loved. Destroying the earth just wasn’t right, not with the small man in it. The small man deserved better. The hole closed up. Daddy was freer now, I reasoned. I wanted to just savour the life I had now, not wallow anymore. That was for when I was still young and thirsty for strength. I wouldn’t spare any self-pity to offer to myself. So I said goodbye. It was bittersweet, yes, but I felt oddly light now. It felt better, in a way.

 

That farewell was just as short-lived as my hope of my father returning was.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Edelweiss – Switzerland’s national flower
> 
> Blue Cornflower – Estonia’s national flower  
>  
> 
> I didn’t include the part about the aliens rejecting Mochimerica as a test subject in their spaceship because according to the comic it was just a dream that Estonia had, not an actual occurrence, but included the one about Mochi!Spain because it has allusions to it being not quite a dream.
> 
> Mochi!Spain is the evil tomato farmer. He is the mastermind.
> 
> If you have anything you don't feel you understand fully, feel free to comment and I'll answer your questions!


End file.
